After a short hiatus from driving, I returned to the mean streets of McLean, Va. last week. Once again, our teacher was Jason. Just so you know, Jason is a very determined guy. He’s so determined that when his vegetable garden failed to thrive, he simply portioned off another area of his backyard and plunged [...]
Cynthia Pratt guesses at least 200 cars had to be moved from two blocks of Hobart Street NW in Mount Pleasant for tree trimming early this month. But as usual, some residents disregarded the no-parking signs. In the past, parking scofflaws were ticketed, and trimmers worked around the cars, says Pratt, who has lived on [...]
Today, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs announced in a press release that the notorious Youngin's Towing is no longer in business.
The company's appeal to the city's Office of Administrative Hearings failed today, and Youngin's is now barred from "operating a towing business or a towing storage facility."
Anyone who has their car currently impounded [...]
The mother of the 18-year-old Bowie State University student who went missing for eight days in September after crashing his car down a ravine in Beltsville says her son is still recovering in a Washington hospital.
Although Julian McCormick's injuries at first seemed minor, Peggy McCormick says her son has "extensive tissue damage" caused by hanging [...]
The scene this morning at 17th and Q Streets NW, right in front of Trio and Hank's Oyster Bar: Cameras, captain chairs, guys dressed in black, actors, cool-looking people, onlookers, the whole nine yards. Hey, I thought, perhaps they're getting a head start on State of Play, that thriller in which Pitt plays an investigative [...]
The other weekend, Jessica Gould went camping in lieu of driving, and she left me all alone with a new instructor: my boyfriend, Tim.
I wanted to put Tim at ease, to make him feel like he was not going to meet a low-speed demise in a Zipcar named "Yuletide." So I projected an easy confidence [...]
This week, Jessica Gould and I took to the mean streets of—well, of a high school parking lot, where we drove in circles. This may seem like a step down from our conquering of McLean last week, but parking lots are trickier than they sound. For one thing, a father-and-son duo kept tailgating us. They [...]
Today is Car-Free Day in the District of Columbia, which provided city politicos a chance to prove their ecocredentials during this morning's commute.
Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, who masterminded the holiday, rode his bike to work, as did City Administrator Dan Tangherlini. Council Chairman Vincent Gray and Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans took Metro. But [...]
A decade ago, I climbed into my father’s car and hit the road. Like generations of fathers and daughters before us, we started slowly, circling empty parking lots and driving carefully around cul-de-sacs. We drove almost every Sunday, blasting Blondie as we tooled around Northern New Jersey.
When I turned 17, I got my license [...]
Thanks go out to that very helpful jaywalk cop writing tickets at 18th and Columbia for his succinct take on the paradox in which he participated this morning. The city who sent him to write the tickets, you know, to protect pedestrians from themselves, murderous buses, and other vehicles, is the same city that regularly [...]
A poster to Yahoo's TakomaDC group generated some traffic yesterday when she asked people how they get old DMV registration stickers off their windshields. "Is it just a matter of huge quantities of patience with a utility knife?" she wondered. "These things are a bear!"
Another poster forwarded the following tip, which someone else had sent [...]
Commuters beware: Your northbound launching pad is in peril.
The District's Department of Transportation is weighing proposals to turn this four-lane expressway into a sleepy, two-way neighborhoody street. Rerouting would affect the portion of 15th from the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue NW all the way up to Florida Avenue/W Street.
According to DDOT spokesman Erik [...]
If everyone drives to a sold-out game at the new Nationals stadium, the result will be a mess.
That was the unstated message of the Aug. 2 "open house" held to brief D.C. residents on the Traffic Operations and Parking Plan (TOPP) for the stadium, which is scheduled to open for the 2008 baseball season. Representatives [...]
Youngin's Towing and Auto Body needs permission to sink its hooks into any more cars.
Under a restraining order issued last Thursday in D.C. Superior Court, "Youngin's shall be prohibited from all towing, except instances where they have an explicit agreement in advance with the owner of the vehicle to be towed."
While the judge's order is [...]
Editor's Note: Earlier this year, Justin wrote Iceland, a blog about his band's American tour. Justin isn't on tour anymore, but Iceland continues, twice a week, on City Desk.
"A red Mustang," observed the rental-car attendant. The time had come for me to return my rental car. This attendant was all too happy to oblige.
"A red [...]
